Chew On This Presents Natalie Kamajian
ON THE POLITICS OF REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING: DANCING ARMENIAN YARKHUSHTA DURING WARTIME PROTEST
Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2 p.m.
Free
UCLA Kaufman Hall 160
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/98637701446?pwd=ZmdIeUh4aTlpbjVDdTZxckw2RXZyUT09
In 2020, Turkey and Azerbaijan launched a full-scale war in Armenia and Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh) for 44 days, targeting civilians, displacing over 100,000 Armenians from their homes, and destroying sacred sites— much of which continues today. Viewed by Armenians as a continuation of the Armenian Genocide (1894-1920), the war sparked renewed sentiments of the Armenian political idea goyamart, meaning “battle for existence.” In the wake of this violence, Armenians across the diaspora incorporated the martial dance yarkhushta into their protests. Through choreographic analysis, ethnographic research, and my own dance practice, I trace how yarkhushta is imbricated in an embodied politics of either remembering or forgetting against a legacy of violence, displacement, and erasure.
Natalie Kamajian is a fifth-year Culture and Performance Ph.D. student and Armenian vernacular dance practitioner whose research will constitute the first critical investigation and multilingual study of Armenian dance and its competing aesthetic expressions and socio-political framings.
